Monday, November 12, 2012

That's our new moniker now that allegations have emerged that author Paula Broadwell who's lived in the Queen City since 2009 with her family had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus (or "betray us" as some disillusioned fans of the general are now calling him). He resigned as director last week.

The other mistress residing in the city - in case you forgot - is Rielle Hunter, once the paramour of presidential candidate and former U.S. senator from North Carolina, John Edwards. The outing of Edwards caused him to drop out of the 2008 presidential race.

Diane Diamond in the Daily Beast notes that the two women live within blocks of each other. "Perhaps the two spotted each other at the Dilworth Gardens Shopping Center just off Scott Avenue," she writes. Ummm.

While you're pondering that, take a gander at some of the conspiracy theories swirling around the handling of the Petraeus affair. The New Republic's Eileen Shim outlined several of them, with these two being leading theories: "that Petraeus delayed his resignation to avoid hurting President Obama on Election Day, and to hide the “truth” about Ambassador Chris Stevens’ death in Benghazi."

The Petraeus affair still fought with fallout from the elections for news coverage however. Here's some more of what pundits were saying.

From Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard:
"The white vote is a Republican stronghold - and not because of racism. In 2008, Obama fared better with white voters (43 percent) than Democrat John Kerry had in 2004 (41 percent). In 2012, Obama’s white support fell to 39 percent. He won 55 percent of the women’s vote overall, but only 42 percent of white women. Republicans shouldn’t feel guilty about their white support. Nor should they apologize for winning the male vote again this year (52 percent). Whites, particularly white men, are simply more conservative than African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Their natural home is the Republican party. This is also true of the middle class, no matter where you set its parameters. The largest body of voters (31 percent) have family incomes between $50,000 and $99,000 a year. Romney won this bloc, 52-46 percent.

"Best of all, the Republican bench of potential presidential candidates is young, deep, and impressive. Here’s the short list: Senator Marco Rubio (41), Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (41), Paul Ryan (42), Senator Kelly Ayotte (44), South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (40), Senator-elect Ted Cruz (41), and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (45). Democrats don’t come close to matching this group...With Pat McCrory’s election in North Carolina, Republicans hold 30 of the 50 governorships. This is no small feat. Governors invariably are the strongest political leaders in their states... They’re important players in national politics."

In the Weekly Standard, Christopher Caldwell tags the Obama win as a triumph of values - the wrong ones - in "Values Voters Prevail Again." He writes:

"In January, the Obama White House set out to pick a fight with the Catholic church over contraception. A Health and Human Services directive ordered that all insurance plans cover contraception, morning after pills, and sterilizations with no exceptions for religious conscience. This looked like an act of folly. Not only was it an affront to the free exercise of religion, but Catholics are the largest group of swing voters in the country... [But] The Obama campaign understood that 'reproductive rights' are similar to 'gun rights.' Even if the number of people who care about protecting them is small, all of them vote on the issue. And in a country that now has as many single women as married women, the number is not small. President Obama won the Catholic vote on the strength of a landslide among Hispanics. (Non-Hispanic Catholics opposed him 59-40 percent.)

Caldwell criticized Romney for not being firm on his beliefs, comparing his views on abortion to an old Groucho Marx line: "These are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." Caldwell noted of the presidential race: "The values were different, but structurally the outcome was the same one that we have seen decade after decade. Where two candidates argue over values, the public may prefer one to the other. But where only one candidate has values, he wins, whatever those values happen to be."

Been here in this city for 4 yrs. I'm a single professional in my 30s... can't even tell you the number of women I've seen since moving here who are married. Watch your wives gentlemen. Guys like me are out there.

carolinaTRUTH - Actually, isn't it George Bush's fault, like the current economy, global warming, the Middle East unrest, the Spanish Inquisition, Adam & Eve eating the forbidden fruit and the last Ice Age 14,000 years ago are all George Bush's fault?

About this blog

The Observer's editorial board cares deeply about Charlotte and the Carolinas, and has a problem with public officials who have forgotten that they report to citizens. Editorial page editor Taylor Batten and associate editors Peter St. Onge and Eric Frazier tackle politics and public policy issues locally, across the state and nation. Kevin Siers tackles those issues too in cartoons. Read their columns and biographical information on the CharlotteObserver.com Opinion page.